By Will Lerner, Communications Manager for Portland Japanese Garden & Japan Institute
A Generational Practice
Portland Japanese Garden is honored to have the dedicated support of local artists, musicians, and practitioners who share their expertise and talents with our guests at cultural demonstrations and performances. They help us pursue our mission of Inspiring Harmony and Peace by shining light on Japanese culture as a form of cultural diplomacy, a term that has many definitions but can generally be taken as a means of establishing peace and friendship through the mutual exchange of the arts, values, beliefs, customs, and more. Two such individuals are Jeffrey and Andrew Robson, a father and son who have been demonstrating at the Garden over the past several years.
Andrew, the son, is an award-winning bonsai artist and former President of the Bonsai Society of Portland, the largest club in the U.S. In addition to his bonsai demonstrations, he regularly exhibits his work at the Garden and regularly travels across the nation to teach learners of all different skill levels about the practice. Jeffrey, the father, began studying at the Ikenobō School of Ikebana in 2016, and has attained the rank of Kakyō, Assistant Professor third grade. While his Garden demonstrations center around ikebana, a Japanese and unique approach to flower arrangements, Jeffrey is also a bonsai artist and has served as Secretary of the Bonsai Society of Portland and in a series of leadership roles with the Bonsai Society of Greater St. Louis, including two terms as its President.
Together, the pair run the Milwaukie, Oregon-based Rakuyo-en, a bonsai garden and living classroom where learners learn fundamentals such as repotting, growth management, and working with deciduous trees, Andrew’s specialty. Ahead of Father’s Day, we sat down with the Robsons to learn more about their background and how they’ve become such integral parts of the Portland Japanese Garden community.
Meet the Robsons
Jeffrey grew up in northern New Jersey, a stone’s throw from New York City. While many might flash to scenes of bustling urban cores steeped in glass, concrete, and asphalt, nature abounds in the metropolitan area, including Jeffrey’s childhood home.
“I had a great set of parents who I was very close to, but when it comes to gardening, it was my grandfather that was my early inspiration,” Jeffrey shares. “He had a very large vegetable patch at my parents’ house and I’d go help him. He would take a saltshaker with him. He’d pick a tomato off the vine, salt it, and eat it like an apple. And so from those early days, I was always interested in gardening. My undergraduate degree is in biology with an emphasis on botany and ornithology. Gardening has always been in my blood.”
When he was on the verge of turning 30, Jeffrey transferred to St. Louis, moving there with his wife, Karen, and their oldest son Brad, who now lives in Memphis, Tennessee. “My parents were on vacation in Bermuda, so I didn’t have time to chat with them,” Jeffrey recalls. “When they got back, I picked them up at the airport. My dad asked, ‘Anything exciting happen while we were gone?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m moving to St. Louis.”
Andrew would be born in Missouri. The natural environs the youngest Robson grew up in would influence his bonsai career years later—whereas some bonsai artists will tend to devote more of their focus to evergreens, Rakuyo-en is replete in the kind of deciduous trees Andrew played near as a kid. The fascination with nature he would develop wouldn’t be bound to a back yard—Robson family outings often included some kind of outdoor outing. “We were a big gardening family,” Andrew recalls. “One of my earliest memories of plants are visits to a local business, Crabapple Cove Nursery. I’d be running around Japanese maples when they were shopping for garden plants. We grew up with several hundred orchids in the house and a lot of different plants.”
The interest in Japanese culture would, fittingly, blossom in a garden. For more than 40 years, the Missouri Botanical Garden has hosted its annual Japanese Festival—a multiday gathering featuring taiko drumming, dancing, martial arts, candlelight walks, and displays of bonsai. “One year at the Festival, Andrew saw a Kingsville boxwood he liked—but it cost $350,” Jeffrey remembers. “When we got home, he got a call telling him he had made the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra as first chair flute. Karen and I wanted to get him something, so we asked what he wanted and he asked for the boxwood. I wrote up a contract that night for him to sign that if we were to go get him that tree, he needed to commit to going to every meeting of the local bonsai club for a year unless it conflicted with his commitments to the orchestra. He signed the paper and we bought our first tree!”
“The Japanese Festival sparked this whole crazy thing we have here in the backyard,” Andrew agrees.
The First Steps
Andrew’s talents as a flutist eventually grew to the point where he was accepted into Yale University’s prestigious School of Music. After graduation he moved to the place his father had grown up seeing across the Hudson River: New York City. Despite his success, Andrew began to feel he wasn’t heading down the path he wanted. “I was just starting a career as a classical musician,” he remembers. “I was doing a lot of performances in the City and doing a lot of teaching, but that’s when I realized that while I was good as a musician, I wasn’t enjoying it.”
“I gave up that life to do a bonsai apprenticeship and that led to the career I have now—this has been much more sustainable and fulfilling. I’m still teaching, but now it’s bonsai and I get to travel the country doing it. I just got back from Denver, Colorado and am days away from a visit to teach at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.”
For Jeffrey’s part, his interest in the horticultural arts of Japan didn’t lead him into it as a fulltime profession before retirement. A member of the Bonsai Society of Portland, and Garden Manager of Rakuyo-en, he’s certainly interested in bonsai, but his demonstrations at Portland Japanese Garden have been focused on ikebana. He shares lessons from his training through the Ikenobō School, the oldest and largest school of ikebana in Japan.
His interest in the artform was also fostered at the Missouri Botanical Garden. “The main exhibition hall during the Japanese Festival is split in two—one half are displays of ikebana organized by Ikebana International Chapter Three,” Jeffrey shares. “Over the year I would ask if they had evening or weekend classes but the answer was always no. Finally, one year a professor at the University of Missouri started holding classes on weekends. He taught through the Ikenobō School, so I signed up and have been working my way through the certificate ranks ever since.”
The Robsons and the Garden
Andrew would move to the Portland area in 2016 to apprentice under Michael Hagedorn, considered one of the foremost American experts in bonsai and a consultant to Portland Japanese Garden. It was through Hagedorn that Andrew connected with the Garden. “I would come seasonally through my apprenticeship, right before the Garden expanded [in 2017],” Andrew recalls. “When they [Ellie M. Hill Bonsai Terrace and Jubitz Oregon Terrace] were finished, Michael and I would bring the bonsai over when the weather warmed up. I then became one of the first cultural partners to do presentations in the [Cathy Rudd Cultural Corner]. It has been a lot of fun.”
“I’ve always enjoyed going to the Garden,” Andrew continues. “Even though its proximity is close to Portland, it feels like it’s kind of an oasis away from the city—I especially enjoy the borrowed scenery you can view from the Mount Hood Overlook.” Andrew is referring to a Japanese landscape aesthetic, shakkei, in which a view of a natural landscape is incorporated into a garden’s design. For the Garden, it’s the view of Mount Hood on the eastern side of the Pavilion, looking out past Washington Park and downtown Portland.
“I think a garden, much like a bonsai, is a way of meeting nature halfway,” Andrew continues. “It’s a way to kind of get one step closer to nature and have an intimate relationship with it. You’re not just going on a hike through the woods—you’re building the woods at home. You can do that in a bonsai pot or you can do that in a thousand square foot garden. When you visit Portland Japanese Garden, you get to see that done at a very, very high level. I love when you walk into the courtyard and you see the tiny garden [tsubo-niwa] that all the tour guides kind of take people to. It’s fun showing people that a relationship with nature can be created in any space that they have, regardless of how small it is.
“We used to come out and visit Andrew regularly when he was apprenticing and so he used to take us around town,” Jeffrey remembers. “When the Cultural Village opened, he took us up to see the bonsai terrace and then we walked through the whole landscape. When I got back to St. Louis, I changed my matched political action grant from the Missouri Botanical Garden to Portland Japanese Garden. I was a member of the Golden Crane Recognition Society for years before I moved out here.”
“One thing that I find very fascinating about Portland Japanese Garden is that you won’t find another place like it, not even in Japan. You’ve built a bunch of individual gardens to showcase approaches to landscape architecture throughout time. My favorite spot is the space that overlooks Sand and Stone Garden. I can stand there for hours. I also like the Mount Hood Overlook. I love being able to see the juxtaposition of Japanese aesthetics with Oregon’s natural beauty. The Garden is a magical place.”
A Father and Son Effort
Both Andrew and Jeffrey are now regularly seen in the Cathy Rudd Cultural Corner—Andrew presenting on bonsai, Jeffrey on ikebana—making them the only parent and progeny team to do so at Portland Japanese Garden.
“My theory is that most parents lose relationships with their sons during middle school and high school,” Jeffrey offers. “And so with my two sons, I decided if I want to remain close to them throughout my life, I needed to be interested in things they were interested in. Andrew and I are wired similarly—so we both really clicked on the arts, music, and Japanese culture. It’s been great to share this experience with him.”
“Our lives were really strongly impacted by Japanese garden arts,” Andrew agrees. “To be able to share our interest with other people through the Cultural Corner and exhibitions like the one the Bonsai Society of Portland holds here is really rewarding. Just getting to go the Garden regularly is a treat.”
Of course, both give a quick and firm yes when asked if people should come attend their demonstrations. They see it as a great way for beginners to take the first step in learning.
“The demonstrations that we do are a good introduction,” Andrew notes. “I try and give people a glimpse of what we do and to help them understand how to appreciate bonsai when they’re walking through the Garden and see them on display.”
“I could talk ad nauseum about the benefits of the place like the Garden and the demonstrations at the Cultural Corner,” Jeffrey concludes. “We had a kid who saw Andrew’s demonstration at the Bonsai Society exhibition in April. He’s 13. I invited him later to visit us here at Rayuko, and we’re going to try to make sure that he is successful in his bonsai journey because I think it’s important. It’s a great hobby that can be done in an inexpensive way. You can start with small seedlings and with patience, time, dedication, knowing a few simple techniques, you can develop your own bonsai. Anybody can do it.”